McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has promised a \u201ccompletely new car\u201d for the season resumption in Miami<\/a> as the defending world champions strive to ignite their campaign.<\/p>\nPiastri claimed the team\u2019s first podium for the year in Japan after a tough start to the season when he crashed out on the warm-up lap of his home grand prix, while both he and world champion teammate Lando Norris failed to start in China due to separate technical issues.<\/p>\n
Three races into the season, McLaren sits third in the team\u2019s standings behind pacesetters Mercedes, and Ferrari, while Norris and Piastri are fifth and sixth in the drivers\u2019 standings. <\/p>\n
Piastri did not expect the rule tweaks to have much impact on the competitive order, but was hopeful the team\u2019s developments could help it close the gap to Mercedes and ignite a title charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly a lot of people are going to have upgrades and better cars, but from a rule change point of view, it\u2019s really not going to change the order of things very much,\u201d Piastri said ahead of Miami.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the grand scheme of things, they\u2019re very small changes. But it\u2019s going to be interesting to see what the development is like for everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly Mercedes are very strong at the moment, so hopefully we can close the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe championship is far from over at this point, but we \u2026 well everyone, but us, McLaren, need to find performance pretty quickly to get ourselves in that fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we\u2019ve got things (upgrades) here this weekend and more things to come in the near future and hopefully it\u2019ll be enough to at least put us in the fight.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mercedes have claimed victory in the opening three races of the season \u2013 George Russell in Melbourne and Italian young gun Kimi Antonelli in the past two races in China and Japan.<\/p>\n
While Piastri hoped the upgrades would make McLaren more competitive, he questioned whether they would be enough to challenge the Silver Arrows in Miami this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we\u2019ll be faster. Obviously, that\u2019s the plan,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to wait and see where exactly we come out. I think it\u2019s a step in the right direction for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be enough to challenge Mercedes this weekend, I don\u2019t think, but it\u2019s definitely a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe motivation and the confidence in the team at the moment is high. I think we\u2019re on a good trajectory again. Japan was nice to go into the break with a bit of confidence in showing our potential and hopefully we\u2019ve just added to that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addressing the rule changes, aimed at enhancing qualifying and addressing concerns over closing speeds, for Miami, Piastri said they were a step in the right direction, but said the underlying issues with the new product could not be fixed without significant change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the collaboration\u2019s been good and trying to make changes, I think they\u2019re a step in the right direction,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow far they go to helping the problems, you\u2019re never going to fix the problems without changing the hardware of the power units, but I think it\u2019s a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much it helps, we\u2019ll have to wait and see. But certainly, some of the tweaks are a good step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the rule tweaks, the FIA has banned the use of boost mode to help with overtaking in wet weather as the Miami race faces the threat of wild weather.<\/p>\n
Rain and a high chance of storms are currently forecast for the city on race day with the conditions sparking questions about safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think many of us have driven these cars in the rain before, maybe a couple of people in Barcelona at the shakedown,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think they\u2019re going to be challenging cars to drive in the rain just because of some of the quirks that they have.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd obviously the weather, normally if it rains in Miami, it does properly, so we\u2019ll wait and see. But it will be interesting one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
As four-time world champion Max Verstappen said he was \u201ctaking my time\u201d to consider his future amid his concerns over the sport\u2019s new regulations<\/a>, the Red Bull ace described the rule tweaks for Miami as just a \u201ctickle\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not what we need yet to really make it flat out,\u201d Verstappen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s complicated to get everything to agree. I just hope that next year we can make really big, big changes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri has declared the Formula 1 title battle is \u201cfar from over\u201d, but added McLaren needs to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-642253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}